How do you exlain autism to a 11 year old

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My oldest son was diagnosed as HFA in high school using both quantitative measures and behavioral DSM criteria.
He was diagnosed as ADHD-I at the same time. He is in college now and struggling. My youngest son is 11 and was diagnosed with ADHD-I. I am diagnosed with ADHD-I and have some undiagnosed ASD traits.
My wife and I were discussing our oldest and afterwards my 11 year old asked "what is Autism? Do I have that?" - The "correct" answer is complicated - there is the DSM definition, there are the neurological studies. There are the "Activist" statements. There are genetic findings and theories about genetics and environmental factors that may cause genetic predispositions to be express - BOTH nature and nurture. Some Autistics (Person's with Autism, Autistic persons, people diagnosed with Autism, Auties, Aspies - choose your politically correct term) are non-verbal some are not. There is the whole "multicolored jigsaw puzzle" image.

We watched a couple of youtube "what is autism" videos and they each said very different things.

If an 11 year old asked you "what is Autism? Do I have that?" what would *you* answer?

To describe autism, I would explain it with something that they have likely used before: computers (or smart phones). They are similar in design, yet not exactly the same. They can have different operating systems or chips installed, so they do things differently or at a different rate. Some have a large storage capacity built in while others have less. There are many differences, yer they still function for the same purpose: to be useful to people.

Whether or not they have it is a much harder question to answer. In some ways only time will tell.

The way I see it the brain is a little like a computer but with ASD some things are not installed and have to be bit by bit assuming they can be. With HFA you have more processing power but with the bits missing it can be even harder to "install" what is missing. Then there are the things that weren't quite installed right hence overactive mind and sometimes inability to comprehend that they are doing something wrong.

I'm defining bits missing as social interaction problems, slower than normal mental development and behavioural problems. The fix from a computer point of view would be installing patches to "fix" the problem. Of course, a human takes an age to learn the new rules and many can't.

There are also a couple of books that might help like All Cats have Asperger's

You probably know (or at least have a good guess) about whether the 11 year old is Autistic. I'd start by telling them the truth on that. (Yes; No; We're not sure yet but probably not; etc.)

The answer to that question drives whether the explanation of Autism is to help him better understand his older brother, or to better understand himself.

I'm not a parent but I was (once) 11 years old.

Could always try to find a compassionate Psychologist that deal with Autism , and , get him evaluated or have them explain it ?

All that comes to mind.. is a simple emoji. Even though I'm on the spectrum.. Id be like.. errrm

I like the computer analogy of the computer, but I am curious how to explain "social skills" in language that makes sense at his age. If Autism weren't a spectrum it would be easier to describe "what is it". My own personal understanding takes the idea of "hyper- and hypo-sensitivities" to its logical conclusion - sensory inputs and language, communication outputs are either "over wired" or "underwired" or have the "volume control" either "turned up to high" or "turned down too low" - the same for processing and integration - but this is essentially "what is it made of" not "what is the behavior" and - behavior and social skills are hard to put in simple concrete language - even for people naturally "good at" that kind of thing.

By comparison DS11 is much more social than DS21 but in other contexts it is much less sure. He has trouble reading body language and is introverted, he has trouble joining groups. He has few friends at school - and sometimes it is hard to tell if he really has any or is just making up names to please parents who keep asking "who are your friends" and "what are their names".

For someone with ASD who is very low functioning it is easy to tell and easy to describe - or at least hard to overlook - but it gets harder and harder as the ASD becomes more HF. At this level it is hard to tell between ADHD impulse control or ASD hypersensitivity - or ADHD hyperfocus and ASD perseverating - or ADHD hyper focus and ASD special interest or "persistent preoccupation with parts of objects".

Also I am not sure the idea of a spectrum really makes sense - it is more like a graph with more than one axis - more than two - more than three - really N-dimensional.

Frankly it is hard to tell if ADHD and ASD aren't really just two flavors of the same thing - a combination or EF hyper-and-hypo-sensitivities, or neurological hyper-and-hyposensitivities.

But all that seems a bit too much for DS11 at this time.

Having know a few ADHD and many various ASD persons , am not sure , I can correlated the two.but that is only my experience .